Rome 2: St. Peter's Basilica and Square, and new housing arrangements

After the Vatican Museums, we continued on to St. Peter's Basilica, which overlooks the square that is probably most commonly associated with Vatican City.  This is the largest cathedral in the world, and man does it look it! It is incredibly impressive to just stand in.  You feel like such a dwarf in comparison to the massive arches, statues, and tombs.

The entirety of the Vatican was one of my favorite parts of Rome.  You could just feel the weight of the history, the beauty of all of the art, and the importance of it all.  Even though I am not religious, it all was still so impressive.  There are literally no words to describe it. 

Michelangelo's "Pieta"

One of numerous tombs, they started running out of room!

Work of Bernini

Another Bernini.  Since they were running out of room, this tomb is above a doorway.  But instead of ignoring the doorway, Bernini included it in the design.  Now, when the door opens, it illuminates the skeleton (which you might not be able to see), but it adds to the entire piece.  

The swiss guard.

St. Peter's from the outside.

St. Peter's Piazza. 

Finally the tour finished, and I realized that I was absolutely dreading the rest of the trip, because it meant that I had to go back to that awful hostel.  I did not want to sleep there again, let alone have to walk around the facility by myself, when I felt both uncomfortable and verging on unsafe.  I am not trying to whine about it, but I am just trying to set the scene.  I was cold, lonely, homesick, and absolutely terrified of going back.  I had also gotten no sleep, since the drunk partiers were up to all hours of the night.  It got to the point where I realized that I was not going to enjoy the rest of the trip if all I could think about was the hostel.

So I formulated a plan, and set out to look for other hostels.  There were tons of signs for availabilities, but it being Easter weekend, they were all booked up of course.  Little known fact: Rome is VERY popular on Easter Sunday...odd, haha.  Finally, I saw a sign for a Best Western, and stumbled in.  I think I must have looked a wreck, because the men at the desk were so helpful, obviously knew that I could not afford an expensive room, and lowered the price quite a bit for me.  It was still more expensive than I wanted, but to have found somewhere on Easter weekend, was truly an Easter miracle. 

After that, the trip really turned around.  Now I had a safehaven to come back to, somewhere that was warm, comfortable, and safe (and had free breakfast in the morning!), and a great base camp.  At the time, I felt like I was ¨wussing out,¨ and was not a good traveler for not being able to stick out a yucky situation, but the more I look back on it, the more I think I made the right call.  I ESPECIALLY realized this, the next day, when it downpoured the entire Easter Sunday, and I had a place to come back to, shower, and be able to hang out my wet clothes, something I could not have done in my tent.  All in all, good decision, and I certainly learned how to do things differently next time.

I was exhausted after all of that, but had a nice warm bed to settle into.

Coming up: Easter Sunday (Colosseum, Roman Forum, and numerous plazas and fountains)